“I just want all these poor people to keep waiting for this ‘trickle down.’ They’ve been waiting for like 400 years. It ain’t trickled down yet,” Charles Barkley

Quote III

“I never thought that could happen in the middle of Berlin. That’s something you see in other parts of the world. It’s really disturbing. It feels like we’re being threatened because you never know how people will react further when something like this occurs.”Mikhail Tanaev.

Update: Quote from original link removed because of controversy. Quote remains the same but linked to a different source.

Quote IV

[W]hile many of us on staff were subject to Charlie's unsolicited shoulder massages and physical intimidation, as he towered above us at a height over six feet tall, the women Charlie preferred and preyed upon – at least that I witnessed – were white. It was an environment that all but erased me, while simultaneously exploiting me as a black woman. Rebecca Carroll

The Library of Congress issued a white paper this month saying that it was proud of its comprehensive collection of tweets from the first 12 years of Twitter, but that it’s completely unnecessary for it to continue. Instead, the organization will only collect tweets that it deems historically significant. For instance, President Trump’s tweets are almost certainly still going to be saved for future generations.

One reason that the Library is stopping the comprehensive archive? The social media company’s controversial change to allow 280 character tweets.

Using an ambulance to travel to the hospital in an emergency can cost upwards of $1,000 USD. Now research demonstrates that a significant number of people are instead choosing Uber to perform the same service.

The paper – currently being peer reviewed – examines the effect on ambulance usage as Uber was introduced to 766 cities across 43 states. According its findings, even the most conservative estimate shows a seven percent reduction in people traveling via ambulance where the service is available.

As much as America loves her guns, she has never liked the idea of seeing them in black hands.

Before the Revolutionary War, colonial Virginia passed a law barring black people from owning firearms — an exercise in gun control as racial control. In 1857, in his notorious Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney summoned the specter of black people freely enjoying the right to “keep and carry arms wherever they went.” Surely, he argued, the founders were not “so forgetful or regardless of their own safety” to permit such a thing. When black people armed themselves against white supremacist attacks following the Civil War, Southern state governments passed “black codes” barring them from owning guns. After the Black Panthers open carried to signal to California police officers that they would defend themselves against racial attacks in the late ’60s, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan signed a state ban on open carry into law.

December 27, 1980, John and Yoko's Double Fantasy album started an eight-week run at No.1 on the US chart. 'Just Like Starting Over' started a five-week stay at No.1 on the singles chart. via thisdayinmusic.com

Last night's ONT discussed the Beatles, both as a band and as individual artists. This song from George Harrison's debut solo album is in The ONT's opinion just as good as anything produced by McCartney and/or Lennon. Just our .02

Murders in the U.S. rose nearly 9% last year, and one-third of that increase came from just a few neighborhoods in Chicago, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the FBI’s annual 2016 publication, Crime in the United States.

While violent crime (homicide, rape, assault, and robbery) also rose nationwide from 2015 to 2016 — over 4% — the data show the increase was not uniform, but rather concentrated in cities like Chicago and Baltimore.

When life does not have value, why would law work?

*****

I wouldn't want to be a bus driver. It was tough when I was a student. It's harder now. But......for Heaven's sake don't be a bus driver and a Genius Award Winner.